watch the level
I take a shower to warm up after my daylong stroll in the rain. Then I dress again. I am hungry. I don’t think food will kill this hunger, but I go out again nevertheless.
It’s going to be a long night.
It’s getting dark early. I walk down the road from the city gate. I pass tourists and praying people and beggars and lovers. I walk around the former city hall. I have a look at the illuminated steps to find them empty. I sit down on the steps. I look across the square. I watch the people walking across the square. I look for your face. I can’t find it. I sit some more, then I get up and walk across the square and up a little to a street which turns to the left off the center road. 30 meters into the street there is a bar.
Actually, it is not just a bar. It is the bar where we spent our evening. It is the bar with the yard where we had our first dinner together – and also our only dinner. This time, the door to the yard is locked like it was last time when we were eager to leave but couldn’t and had to kiss the time away before we figured there might be another exit.
the door we used to kiss behind
It is this exit now that serves me for an entrance. It’s a club at this time of the evening, so I pay an entrance fee and step up to the restaurant level with a dance floor. It’s pretty crowded already, but I find a table for two close to the dance floor from where I have a good look over to the bar and the biggest part of the restaurant.
It’s amazing how big a table for two can feel if you’re alone.
My waitress is a slim girl with short-cropped hair the color of liquid copper, a ring in her left nostril and the same stamp mark on her belly next to the rim of pretty low-hanging pants as I have on the back of my hand. She has a warm smile and light blue eyes.
I order a beer for starters, then some hot soup, chicken with mashed potatoes, and some chocolate cake. I’m through with my beer when the soup arrives, so I have one more. I won’t run out of beer tonight. I can feel that. And that feeling will prove to be true.
I eat, and I drink, then I lean back and have a look around. Feels like I’m by far the oldest person here. I never thought one could outgrow certain kinds of bars, but I obviously did. I don’t care though. I sit in my chair, hand closed around my beer.
I feel the cold through the half-liter glass. I feel the food working around in my stomach.
I feel the cold draft that rushes in through the open door which leads out into the yard (into OUR yard, I think).
I feel the smile of the copper-headed waitress every time she asks me, “One more?”, and I nod, and I feel it again when she brings me the beer, I try to see Esme in her face which is so totally un-Esme but which reminds me of her because Copperhead is living in the same city as her and works in a place where we have been together before and are not now. Or, to make a long story short:
I feel like shit.
To get rid of this feeling, I start to write.
I’ve brought a notebook and a pen, and I sit there bent over the table, left hand sticking to the glass with beer, right hand holding the pen, and I start with a sentence, then add some words, cross out, add some new.
I’m picking up speed as I’m writing along, I’m writing frantically, words are flowing out of me like blood flows from a freshly shot pig, forming puddles of meaning on the pages which fill up fast. I’m writing myself into a phrase frenzy, words add on words, they flow faster than I can write, and they look it, tomorrow I won’t be able to read a big part of the sentences I write tonight, I will spend minutes trying to decipher lines and slings and bends in blue on the crumbled pages of the notebook which seems to moan under the amount of words it has to bear.
Having walked the city for one whole day, having traced our footsteps from one life lived in a day long, long ago, my emotions can’t be controlled; they have to break free in order not to eat me up alive from the inside. I am swinging a textual whip, punishing myself with it, hitting at me with thorns made of words on the tips of the leather leashes, tearing my skin open with sentences sharp as knives, rubbing phrases of salt into the wounds, until I almost cry out loud, “Enough!”.
“One more?”, Copperhead asks me with her Julia-Roberts-smile.
“One more”, I say, smile back with an expression on my face that makes her frown for an instant.
* * *
Later this evening, I find myself to my own surprise on the dance floor. I hadn’t known most of the songs they were playing, but at a certain point they switched to Nineties music, and I went for it. It feels good to move after all this writing, so I move carefully on the crowded dance floor, a grandfather swinging his arthritic hips in a final dance at the rim of his open grave before he returns to his wheelchair for the short rest of his life.
* * *
Sitting in my chair again, beer in hand, I watch two young girls standing not far away in a corner. One of them seems to be falling asleep all the time, the other one is supporting her, nudging her from time to time.
Sleeping Beauty is leaning to the window behind her, eyes closed, her head is constantly sinking down on her chest. Next thing I see is her throwing up, right on the stairs in front of her expensive looking shoes. Now I’m happy that the yard door is still open; it’s bad enough to see the puke, but I don’t want to smell it.
* * *
How much interference do you need to erase the past?
you can walk away from pain but can you walk away the pain?
if interference is the key I might have unlocked the door today which keeps me from sanity by rewalking our path step by step, but without one thing:
the trinity of sun, love, and you
I might have caused interference sufficient enough to bridge the gap between life and existence.
* * *
your dark eyes have left me
left me for good
the make me burn nevertheless
I want my life back
lost it somewhere on my way
never noticed till it was gone
I want my life back
don’t know where it went
woke up one day and it was gone
I want my life back
thought I could do without
I want my life back
* * *
your face on my mobile desktop
I watch it till it shuts itself down
then I watch the dark screen some more
the pain kills me in homeopathic doses
* * *
00:07: no message whatsoever
* * *
You stayed tough. If that helped you, good. I didn’t. That’s my business. There is an US somewhere in history.
* * *
it is you!
* * *
one girl with white belt dancing. fuckable. I am sick.
* * *
what am I doing here? no one, no Esme, is going to call me. Text me. Wossname me.
* * *
I got smsed, therefore I was. Now I’m no more.
* * *
can’t write straight anymore but need to need to overcome overcome myself
* * *
end of tape
* * *
“One more?”
“Yes, please.”
* * *
Some time in the morning, be it four or five, I don’t really know because I can’t read my watch any more, the lights come on. Closing time. Copperhead brings me the bill, I pay for more beer than I thought I had (and also I thought I could stomach). She gives me a final smile and look at her stamped belly I feel strongly inclined to kiss but I don’t because I’m afraid I might fall over trying, then I’m out on the streets which still are wet but there is no more rain. It seems to have warmed up, I don’t feel like closing my coat as I walk up the hill to the city gate.
Stars are out, streets are empty, no cars.
I like the fresh air on my skin and in my lungs
I feel the sweat on my head cooling down, but I don’t have to walk long to reach my hotel. I ring the bell; it takes a while before I hear the buzzer. I push the door open and climb up the steep steps to the glass door which is open with the key dangling on the inside, meaning that is has just been opened for me. As I walk to my room, I realize that there is different girl at the reception tonight.
“Good evening”, I say.
“Good evening”, she says.
The girl is about the same age as the girl yesterday, though a little smaller, with long dark hair falling over her shoulders which are barely covered by a even in this light pretty reveiling green top, dark eyes, and glasses with a dark rim sitting on a slightly crooked nose (as far as I can tell right then).
Maybe corporate identity, the glasses thing, I think, but I think not much more.
However, when I try to stick my key as silently into the lock of my room as possible, she asks me with a nice accent when I would like my breakfast. “At nine, please”, I tell her, trying to keep my voice steady. Nine o’clock. That will give me four or five hours of sleep. And I don’t have any appointments tomorrow yet.
I get undressed, brush my teeth, then go to bed. I check my phone. No message. I close my eyes, find one side on which my bed is not spinning, and fall asleep.
day 2
the cow on the wall without coffee
I have a cunning plan
the river reaches out for the restaurant
broken backrest
the final supper
